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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29348694">I'm sorry. I didn't know</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuinixe/pseuds/Fuinixe'>Fuinixe</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Febuwhump 2021 [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Early Days, Internalized Homophobia, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani Needs a Hug, Light Angst, M/M, Past Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani / Original Female Character(s), Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, Unresolved Romantic Tension, it's about the yearning</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 13:40:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,690</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29348694</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuinixe/pseuds/Fuinixe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Yusuf is trying desperately to maintain the delicate balance between sharing too little and sharing too much with Nicolò.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Febuwhump 2021 [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2143242</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>163</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>febuwhump 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I'm sorry. I didn't know</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Things with Nicolò remained strange. Their friendship was strengthening, it was true, the longer they traveled together, but it was not a straightforward progression. For every two paces forward, they seemed to take one pace back.</p><p>Which was why Yusuf tried to savor these golden periods, when things were easy between them, instead of tense.</p><p>“Nicolò! I’m home!” he announced as he swung open the door to their hut in Cairo. “And I have a lamb shank for our dinner!”</p><p>Nicolò was stooped over their hearth, which was lit, and when he stood straight, Yusuf could see he had their stirring spoon in his hand. “But I already started dinner,” he objected, and Yusuf could detect a faint hint of a pout. </p><p>“Ah, no matter. We can smoke the lamb and it will keep for a different day.” Nicolò nodded and turned back to his pot.</p><p>“I take it Farooq paid you in goods again, instead of coin,” Nicolò said judgmentally, and Yusuf shrugged, though his companion couldn’t see it. </p><p>“It is all the same to me.”</p><p>“I don’t understand why. Coin will travel with us better than merchandise and meat. I thought you said you wanted to go home.”</p><p>Ah, yes, this topic. Yusuf had mentioned one night several months ago, as they drifted aimlessly across the desert, that he missed his home village, and Nicolò had jumped at the idea of having a destination in mind, taking it much more seriously than Yusuf himself had, insisting that of course they ought to make their way back to the Maghreb. Yusuf was not entirely sure how it had morphed into such a clear-cut mission, when he had really only been speaking idly…</p><p>No, that was a lie. He knew how it had happened. He had not wanted to interrupt Nicolò’s enthusiasm, his brighter mood now that they had a purpose. He’d been a gloomy man since they’d left Jerusalem, and Yusuf had thought it was just his natural demeanor. Seeing this new side of him, a Nicolò with focus, was enchanting.</p><p>So he had not disabused Nicolò of this idea, even though the miscommunication had already caused a bit of strain between them, Nicolò sometimes baffled about why Yusuf was moving so slowly towards their departure from Cairo. They’d only intended to stay long enough to do some work and acquire their traveling necessities, and it was now approaching three months here.</p><p>It was just...things were so <em>strange</em> with Nicolò. And confusing. And Yusuf was hesitant to expose even more to this man when he was fairly sure he had already exposed too much. An embarrassing amount, really.</p><p>Yusuf dragged himself back to the moment. “So grouchy,” he teased, keeping his voice light. “What do you have against Farooq, hmm?” He set his parcels down on their table and crossed the dimly lit hut towards the cooking area.</p><p>“Nothing at all, except that he seems not to value your labor as he should,” Nicolò grumped.</p><p>Yusuf decided to change the subject. “Give me a taste?” he asked. Nicolò glanced up and drew a spoonful of stew from his pot, blowing on it.</p><p>Instead of reaching for the spoon as he ought to have, Yusuf wrapped his fingers around Nicolò’s wrist and maneuvered the end of the spoon into his mouth, his other hand hovering beneath to catch any drips. It was only when he wrapped his lips around the spoonful and made eye contact with Nicolò over the wooden handle that he realized he had made a grave mistake. Yusuf swallowed. Nicolò’s eyes were wide, startled, his posture tense. Yusuf had been too familiar, <em>again.</em></p><p>“Blech! Utterly flavorless!” Yusuf complained, dropping Nicolò’s arm and throwing up his hands, a dramatic expression of offense crossing his face, over-acting to cover up the uncomfortable moment that had just passed between them. “You still don’t know how to season our food! You’d make a terrible housewife.”</p><p>Nicolò huffed and rolled his eyes, recovering quickly. “And I suppose you’d make such a great husband?” he asked, sarcastically, turning back to their stew pot.</p><p>Later, Yusuf would wonder what exactly had possessed him in this moment, to respond as he did. Perhaps it was that he’d only just been thinking about returning to his family, and of all the things unsaid between him and Nicolò.</p><p>“My Miriam certainly thought so.” He’d meant it to come out light, but the words sounded somber to his ears. The words hung between them.</p><p>“Miriam?” Nicolò asked. He stiffened. “You mean --”</p><p>It was too late to go back now. “Ah, yes.” Yusuf rubbed his hand through his beard. “I had a wife, once.”</p><p>“Once?” Nicolò repeated.</p><p>“Yes. She... passed. Fever.” Yusuf felt his throat ache as if he wanted to cry, and he couldn’t make sense of it. He thought his grief a thing of the past, but now, telling Nicolò like this, the words pulled one by one from between his teeth, he felt all the physical symptoms of grief while his mind preoccupied itself with trying to put things right again, here in this dirty, dim hut with Nicolò. He did not want their golden moment to end. He did not want to take one pace back.</p><p>But Nicolò was closing off already, as he sometimes did, his face going even stiller, his shoulders drawing inward. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” he said, tonelessly.</p><p>“No -- you could not have,” Yusuf gritted out, and then took several slow breaths, trying to gain control over his strange emotions. Tears of frustration sprang to his eyes and he blinked them away rapidly, turned his back to Nicolò. He needed something to do with his hands very badly. He crossed back to their door and hung his cloak beside it.</p><p>The silence between them was stifling, and did not break all through dinner. Yusuf didn’t even understand <em>why.</em> He turned their words over again and again in his head. Was this news really so shocking to Nicolò?</p><p>Or was it that sharing anything at all about their pasts seemed terribly fraught, given the way they’d met and the differences that lay between them? Would it always be so?</p><p>Yusuf wanted very much to say something to break the painful silence, but every time he opened his mouth, he second-guessed what he was going to say, and shut it again. Washing up after dinner, he’d thought maybe a companionable nudge to Nicolò’s ribs, his body saying what words could not…</p><p>But no. Nicolò had flinched. <em>Flinched.</em> So that was that. The door to Nicolò’s warmth had been shut once more, and Yusuf did not know when it would open again.</p><p>He smoked the lamb over a fire in the courtyard they shared with their neighbors, alone, wishing Nicolò was beside him, asking questions, keeping him company. It took several hours. When he was finally finished, he stood up with a groan and turned back to their home, and found one of their drinking vessels, sitting behind him, filled with water. Apparently Nicolò could not even bear to tap him on the shoulder right now.</p><p>Yusuf was so tired.</p><p>He washed his hands and face and stripped off his clothes, which reeked of smoke, before climbing into his side of the bed. Nicolò was already in it, the blanket pulled up over his shoulder even though it was a nice warm night.</p><p>Yusuf lay there, facing him and yearning for the kind of easy, winding conversation they sometimes engaged in before slumber. Nicolò’s eyes were closed, but Yusuf was fairly certain he was not sleeping yet.</p><p>No matter. As long as his eyelids stayed shut, Yusuf could look his fill.</p><p>The starlight that filtered through their single window cast Nicolò’s face in a soft, blue-gray haze that Yusuf’s eyes adjusted to slowly. He could only see shadows and shadows of shadows, right now, but that was enough for his mind’s eye to fill in the details. The thin scar between his eyebrows, the cupid’s bow of his lip.</p><p>He recognized, shame crawling in his belly, that he had never felt quite this way, looking at Miriam, even as much as he had loved her.</p><p>Was it love that he felt for Nicolò, now?</p><p>The darkness made him brave.</p><p>“Nicolò,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”</p><p>Nicolò’s face twitched, and he opened his eyes. The whites of them were the brightest things in Yusuf’s field of vision, gleaming in the dark. “Yes,” he whispered, in return.</p><p>“I’m sorry.”</p><p>“Why? You have nothing to be sorry for.”</p><p>“I don’t like this. When it gets like this between us.” Yusuf gestured, and let his hand fall to the mattress between their bodies. “A wall goes up.” His voice sounded wobbly to him, and he cleared his throat. “I hate that wall.”</p><p>Nicolò said nothing for several long moments, and Yusuf began to despair again, thinking he’d once more ventured too far in sharing his emotions. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely audible.</p><p>“You should hate me.”</p><p>Was that what this was about? Yusuf sighed, caught between relief and frustration. “Perhaps. But I don’t.” <em>Quite the opposite,</em> he didn’t say.</p><p>He crept his hand forward, just an inch or so, towards Nicolò. Nicolò squeezed his eyes shut, looking pained.</p><p>And then he wormed his hand out from beneath the blanket, and draped it over Yusuf’s. The warmth of it shocked him, spreading heat up his arm and into his whole body. Yusuf swallowed down his gasp and basked in the sensation. Perhaps it was the intimacy of the darkness and the whispers, but this touch felt unlike any other. It felt like joy, and peace, tinged round the edges with something dark and forbidden that Yusuf didn’t want to think about right now.</p><p>They lapsed into silence once more, but it felt different, now. Softer.</p><p>This was all he wanted, sometimes. Just to lie together in the silent, dark warmth of their bed and feel Nicolò’s skin on his.</p><p>He knew it didn’t mean to Nicolò what it meant to him. But tonight, Yusuf was willing to close his eyes, fall asleep, and dream.</p>
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